Planting Willow 2021

The time has finally come for me to start sticking branches into the ground.

I honestly never thought I’d see this day, but one baby step at a time has led me to this place where I ordered around 3,000 willow starts and had to get them in the ground so they could start growing some baskets!

I ordered most of my Willow from Lene at Lakeshore Willows and a couple hundred from Jo Campell-Amsler of Willow Ridge Baskets.

I ordered a custom made planting tool from a blacksmith and tool maker in CT to help with creating holes in my extremely rocky soil. With the help of this tool and a couple of my family members we were able to get all 3,000 plants in the ground in one day.

Willow is an amazing plant that self roots so there is nothing difficult about setting up a bed and getting them snug in the ground. I chose to place down landscaping fabric to control the crazy amounts of weeds in my fields and to keep the maintenance low since I can’t manage beds every day.

Eventually in the next year or two I will need to expand the holes for each willow as it starts to grow bigger and bigger. My hope would be to one day remove the fabric and mulch but that’s something I will explore later.

To be honest I think the fabric is keeping the deer away and the slugs and snails at bay. These were my two biggest concerns, and despite my challenges with the fabric, I truly believe it was the right way to go.

Once I got the willow in the ground it only took a few weeks to start seeing some growth. I was so happy the majority of them survived the planting. Unfortunately the weekend after I planted there was a snow storm and I had issues with the fabric lifting up. You can ask for all the advice that everyone has and still you won’t know until you do something yourself. I learned a lot from my first season growing and I’m sure I’ll do it better and better each year after.

I am just so very grateful to be in this place now. I’m extremely proud of what I’ve accomplished on my own and what I’ve accomplished with amazing help. I don’t really believe in fate, but this place definitely came to me at the right time. I believe that we have to take big chances and just hope for the best. I’ve found that every time I make a major leap without knowing I’ll land….I almost always land on my two feet, and if I don’t I get back up and try again.

A couple of more weeks goes by, and the willow keeps growing. Every time I visit I make sure to mow around the fields and water the baby plants. I try my best to weed when I can and I walk around the beds dreaming about expansion and future varieties I would love to grow.

In my plans for next spring is to set up a bed devoted to letting the willow grow for a couple of years to get big. This willow will be used for stripping bark and I hope to plant several different varieties in the bed for this purpose.

I have a couple of special varieties that I have really fallen in love with. Including a willow I found in a ditch on a NY state back road. They are growing wonderfully and I can’t wait to see how all these plants do when it comes to weaving with them. It’s just so crazy that I’m finally getting into this process after a couple of years just devoted to weaving with willow. Growing has been such a joy and I’m really looking forward to continuing the process of developing a strong connection with this beautiful plant.